


Safe Haven

by NebulousMistress



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Atlantis: Legacy Series - Various Authors
Genre: Contains Science, Gen, Planetary History, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis had planned to return to Lantea, to go back to the beginning.</p><p>But something went wrong. Instead they're here on the edge of habitability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Haven

**Author's Note:**

> I studied a decent amount of theoretical exoplanetary biology for my thesis. Then I read the Legacy Series. 'An active star with an icy planet on the edge of the galaxy' was the book's description.
> 
> 'Active star' old enough to have planets with oxygen means 'red dwarf'. This is (loosely) based on a red dwarf planet model I worked with for my thesis.

On the edge of the dwarf galaxy, in the wisps that trailed through its orbit around Great Andromeda, a loose cluster of stars brought light into the Void. These stars were not young, though they did not know it. They had watched their larger siblings grow red and die or wander into the Void or dive into the galaxy. Yet still these stars stayed together, orbiting each other in a loose cluster. Young, fiery, red.

They danced.

Their dances were long, wide, lazy orbits that took millions of years to finish a single circle. But these stars held secrets.

Secret little dances.

Many of these stars had planets.

One had a large gaseous thing that acted more like an equal than a planet, the brown dwarf using its gravity to swing its star wide like an ungrateful partner.

One had a whole cluster of tiny stones, the result of a planet that danced too close during one of the star's moods. The Roche Limit ended what the flare began and now the star danced serene with its shining rings.

One had planets in wide orbits, little icy worlds left unprotected from the stare of the Void. White, cold, lifeless, bathed in radiation, pretty things that would never be expected to do more than sparkle.

And one had two planets in a resonance. Two rocky planets, both blanketed in ice, always facing their star in tidal lock. But the blanket wasn't total, not on the inner planet.

That planet had an ocean stained black with life.

*****

The star had no name. It was a red dwarf, a flare star not much older than 3 billion years old. Its inner planet orbited just beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone. It should be dead, should be as lifeless as the outer planet in its ice coat.

But it wasn't.

Resonance wouldn't allow it.

The star's habitable zone was small. A mere 16 day orbit lay outside its edge. But this planet was volcanic. The pull of the outer companion competed with the star, pushing and pulling and making tides out of the ground. The planet heated from within, plate tectonics fracturing the surface. Heat spilled out onto the surface, making the few open landmasses glow red with heat, blue with burning sulfur. The vents belched gases that trapped heat, protected the fragile planet from the star's moods. And so, near the undersea lava vents, life took its hold.

Photosynthetic on the day side, chemosynthetic on the night, but always the same color.

Black.

Black to pluck every ray of light from the dim red dwarf. Black to blend in with the night. Black because color was useless in the eternal twilight of day or the harsh Void of night.

Black plants climbed up the lava benches and spread along black sand beaches. Black plants unfurled thin, tough leaves in the constant howling winds. Black waves washed along the edges of the ice caps, staying their spread even as evolution continued and oxygen stole heat from the air itself.

The air grew thick as the volcanism never ceased, kept in check only by the relentless flaring of the angry star. How dare this planet turn black with life? Great sheets of fire burned the oxygen in the atmosphere, burned it to ozone, ironically protecting the atmosphere from the very flares that lashed strong enough to strip the air from a lesser planet.

But this planet was no mere earth. It was rocky, yes, but larger than earth. More gravity, more atmosphere to strip before it suffered, all hidden beneath the ozone shock held in place by an induction field.

The star hissed displeasure in the x-ray spectrum. The black planet would not yield, then. Instead it would exhale volcanic gasses, its black life would eat the chemicals and inhale light, and its atmosphere would glow with the colors the star could not otherwise provide. And below the water's surface, larger creatures began to evolve.

The black planet was their home. They drifted the currents, fed upon microbes, and pondered these new 'colors'.

And then something fell from the sky, splashing down with a great wave before the winds caught it and began to drag it into a whole new dance.

Atlantis drifts the oceans of the black planet in a mockery of an orbit, dragged around the world by the winds and currents. Its people marvel at the ocean, dark as pitch, and at the twilight sun that seethes at their presence. They will adapt to the gravity, to the sulfur, to the darkness, to the pressure, and to the constant winds.

And the black planet will adapt to them. As will its star.

 


End file.
